This bibliography clarifies the circumstances regarding the publication, marketing and distribution (in private, pirated, expurgated, trade and mass-market, hard- and soft-bound editions) of D. H. Lawrence's controversial novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover. Prefixed to the descriptions of each edition are introductory essays designed to both elucidate the novel's long and interesting publication history and indicate the social settings which conditioned its production and reception. The bibliographical listings classify the various printings into editions, impressions, issues and states. The work attempts to describe all appearances of the novel in English in book form whether in pirated, expurgated, continental, or decensored editions, and regardless of format. Introductory essays discuss such matters as distribution of piracies, strategy of expurgations, the 1959 Chatterley Sweepstakes, the Swedish, Paris, and Japanese editions, and the advertising tactics of the paperback publishers. The work therefore attempts a popular history of the novel. It incorporates information obtained through interviews with booksellers, writers, literary agents, and publishers and reproduces title pages, bindings, and illustrations. Special attention is given to the parodies and sequels, which exemplify the shrewdness of publishers from Samuel Roth to Lyle Stuart in exploiting the complex relationships between serious literature, popular pornography and pulp romance. Such details give evidence of the audience for which a particular volume was intended. While a standard bibliography of D. H. Lawrence does exist, no book has as yet offered as much detail on volumes containing the text of Lady Chatterley's Lover, nor has any attempted to capture the lengthy publishing history of Lawrence's pariah novel.

Between the two world wars, at a time when both sexual repression and sexual curiosity were commonplace, New York was the center of the erotic literature trade in America. The market was large and contested, encompassing not just what might today be considered pornographic material but also sexually explicit fiction of authors such as James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, and D.H. Lawrence; mail-order manuals; pulp romances; and "little dirty comics." Bookleggers and Smuthounds vividly brings to life this significant chapter in American publishing history, revealing the subtle, symbiotic relationship between the publishers of erotica and the moralists who attached them—and how the existence of both groups depended on the enduring appeal of prurience. By keeping intact the association of sex with obscenity and shameful silence, distributors of erotica simultaneously provided the antivice crusaders with a public enemy. Jay Gertzman offers unforgettable portrayals of the "pariah capitalists" who shaped the industry, and of the individuals, organizations, and government agencies that sought to control them. Among the most compelling personalities we meet are the notorious publisher Samuel Roth, "the Prometheus of the Unprintable," and his nemesis, John Sumner, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, a man aggressive in his pursuit of pornographers and in his quest for a morally united—and ethnically homogeneous—America.

Samuel Roth is known to most literary scholars as a bold literary "pirate" for issuing unauthorised editions of modernist sensations, including Ulysses and Lady Chatterley's Lover. In the absence of an international copyright agreement and because works deemed obscene could not be copyrighted, what he did was not illegal. But it did violate the protocols of mutual fair dealing between publishers and authors. Those publications provoked an unprecedented international protest of writers, publishers, and intellectuals, who eventually vilified Roth on two continents. Roth was a man with an uncanny ability to recognise good contemporary writing and make it accessible to popular audiences. Ultimately, his dedication to the publication of these works broke down many of the censorship laws of the time, though he suffered greatly for his efforts. His story portrays a struggle with literary censorship in the mid-twentieth century while providing insights into how modernism was marketed in America.